The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association will start publishing the average container dwell times at 12 marine terminals in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on a monthly basis to help supply chain efficiency efforts.
The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association (PMSA) said it will begin publishing average container dwell times at 12 marine terminals in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on a monthly basis.
Dwell time is the amount of time a container waits to get picked up at a marine terminal after being unloaded from a vessel, and PMSA said it is “an indicator of how efficient the ports are operating and how quickly the containers are flowing through the terminals.”
The initial data from PMSA illustrated that even though the number of containers that moved through the two ports in September was lower than in August, the weighted average dwell time increased, and the percentage of containers at terminals for more than five days rose from 4.3 percent to 8.4 percent.
PMSA President John McLaurin said the increase may have resulted from the Hanjin Shipping insolvency.
“Every time a truck shows up to pick up a container, a stack of containers gets shuffled around to get to the intended one; this is a time‐consuming process, which hinders the efficiency for both terminals and truckers,” the association explained. “With longer dwell times, terminals are storing more containers, and truckers must wait for longer periods as containers must be moved to reach the older containers on the bottom of each stack. With shorter dwell times, terminals are storing fewer containers and able to finish transactions more quickly. In this first report, the data shows that most containers are picked up within three days of arrival, but there are a number of containers that overstay their welcome.”
McLaurin said PMSA decided to have the information gathered and published because there is an increase in supply chain efficiency groups, and rather than have them rely on anecdotal information, PMSA thought it would be a good idea for them to have statistics available on a regular basis.
“Hopefully this information will provide data‐driven solutions for improved supply chain efficiency,” he explained.
PMSA said it retained SC Analytics to collect data from marine terminals and analyze and aggregate container dwell times for a San Pedro Bay complex‐wide perspective.
The analysis examines the weighted average dwell times in both days and longshore shifts.
